The present invention relates to the fields of behaviourial medicine, psychosomatic medicine, psychiatry, rehabilitation, special education, and clinical and health psychology. In particular, the present invention relates to a handwriting instrument for self-regulating bodily activities associated with the handwriting act.
Chinese calligraphy is a traditional Chinese art with a history of several thousand years and is practiced by millions of people in Asia today. Psychological research in the past twenty years has established that this ancient art is capable of achieving, in the course of its execution, emotional stabilization, mental relaxation and physiological slowdown, from the physical perspectives. From the standpoint of the cognitive activities, studies have confirmed its positive impact on heightened attention and concentration, enhanced problem-solving capabilities of spatial abilities, spatial and abstract reasoning as well as quicker response time and improved short-term memory. These original findings by the author have led to the establishment of a brush calligraphic training as an effective technique of intervention of a number of psychosomatic, behaviourial and psychological disorders. These include essential hypertension, type II diabetes, emotional conditions in mental patients, as well as attentional and behaviourial enhancement in children with attention deficit and hyperactivity (ADHD) and mild mental retardation.
For the general population, these changes associated with brush-writing have been found to be capable of enhancing their general health condition. Our recent research has also confirmed that the brush-writing effects are not confined to writing Chinese characters. Similar effects are found when the writing act involved English letters and words and other visual forms. These observations help to substantiate the notion that the beneficial functions of brush handwriting (BHW) go beyond linguistic barriers between writing systems but are general and universal. This lays the foundation for developing instruments of brush handwriting, for health improvement, and therapeutic and rehabilitative intervention, that will have global significance and application. The overall findings have confirmed the efficacy of a psychomeometric system of BHW as a general system of constructive behavior regulation and change. This system specifies the types and styles of Chinese characters or other visual forms, sequencing of the styles and forms, duration of training, size and configurations of the brush, the geometricity of characters or spatial forms etc. on the basis of a theoretical framework developed by the author.
Biofeedback training (BFT) refers to clinical training procedures used to modify physiological responses or patterns of such responses that aim to achieve self-regulation of maladaptive responses and disordered states. It includes a set of procedures that enable the individual to control certain specified physiological processes by providing an external cue or monitor to indicate the activity of that process. Biofeedback represents the prototypical approach of the discipline of xe2x80x9cbehaviourial medicine.xe2x80x9d Within behavioral medicine, biofeedback is one clinical technique among many others, which have been introduced as interventions for health disorders. The principles of biofeedback have also been applied in the design of products and instruments used for ordinary practice and training by normal individuals.
When applied to people without obvious health disorders, biofeedback can enhance self-regulation of bodily processes to improve general health such as the generation of specific patterns of brain waves in the practice of transcendental meditation. This technique offers an effective process of treating illnesses as well as enhancing the health of the people under a system of feedback regulation of bodily states.
The present invention together with its variations included in this application integrates the two effective systems, the BHW and the BFT, into a powerful biofeedback device for self-regulation of the brush handwriting process for the purpose of health and clinical intervention.
The present invention integrates the principles of the biofeedback training (BFT) system with those of the Chinese brush handwriting (BHW) system into a powerful biomedical writing instrument for self-regulation of bodily activities associated with the handwriting act. The present invention comprises a conventional Chinese writing brush with a built-in physiological monitoring and sensing device embedded in the shank of the brush. In addition, a sensory feedback display device is included and embedded in the brush to display the changes in the sensory activities of the user in the course of handwriting through specified sensory signals. Alternatively, the monitoring may be conducted through external sensing devices such as a strap or a ring, which is attached to the writing brush, depending upon the type of feedback required of the practitioner.
The biofeedback display consists of sensory signals, e.g., visual, auditory or thermal, about the current state of the user""s bodily conditions, which reflect states of the user""s behavioral, mental, and physiological changes during brush writing or drawing. Feedback signals may be based on singular or multiple sensory modalities and will enable the practitioner to effect changes in the signals through conscious control of the brush-writing process.
The specific functions of the present invention serve four specific behavioral dimensions of the practitioners, i.e., the general health (HQ), emotional stabilization (EQ), cognitive activation (IQ) and muscular control efficiency (MQ). Different biofeedback mechanism will be employed for each of the dimensions identified.
The HQ Brush is the instrument which will display biofeedback of bodily conditions helpful for the promotion of general health. The HQ brush has two versions of sensory detection and feedback display in the form of an embedded or external sensing device linked to the brush. It has the option of a visual (color), auditory (tone), or thermal (skin temperature) display of feedback information. The biological index to be measured in the course of handwriting can be in one or more of the following three available sources: the heart rate (HR), the blood pressure (BP) or the pulse rate (PR).
The EQ Brush is the instrument which will display biofeedback of bodily conditions helpful for the enhancement of emotional stability, reduction of anxiety and positive increase of mood conditions. The EQ brush has two versions of sensory detection and feedback display in the form of an embedded or external sensing device linked to the brush. It has the option of a visual (color), auditory (tone) or thermal (skin temperature) display of the feedback information. The biological index to be measured in the course of handwriting can be one of more of the following three available sources: the digital pulse volume (DPV), the galvanic skin response (GSR), or skin temperature (ST).
The IQ Brush is the instrument, which will monitor states of specific and selected patterns of EEG activities of the user during the writing process. The selected brain wave patterns are reflections of higher states of cognitive functioning associated with creativity, memory, attention, and problem solving. This brush will have only external sensing devices linked to the writing brush for monitoring of the states of EEG changes. It has the option of visual (color), auditory (tone) or thermal (skin temperature) display of the feedback information.
The MQ Brush is the instrument which will display conditions of the user""s motoric or muscular control of the writing act as feedback in order to enable the user to conduct proper or corrective manipulative and transport movements for efficient drawing or handwriting tasks. The sources of the biofeedback are derived from the motor activities of the user relative to certain practical conventions or behavioral criteria that are associated with good penmanship. This instrument aids and helps the learning, training as well as corrective or rehabilitative remediation for good penmanship and graphic skills.
Each type of biofeedback-based brush described above renders the most effective health and therapeutic functions when it is integrated with the principles of Chinese brush handwriting system into a comprehensive Biofeedback Brush-writing Training System (BBTS). Special packages of the training can be designed to target at specified category of health conditions or illnesses in question. In the present application, an exemplary set often (10) designs of the invention is put forward to demonstrate the innovative merits of the inventions as well as its potential for the development of further designs within this general conceptual framework of the biofeedback based handwriting and instrument design for the enhancement of health and therapy.